Tradition
by arcanioque
Summary: Surely, this was nothing like their traditional road home. But Ryoma’s sure he’ll get used to it. [ eijimomoryo friendship ]


Tradition

Surely, this was nothing like their traditional road home. But Ryoma's sure he'll get used to it. [eijimomoryo friendship

My first tenipuri fic. Be nice. And I'm a fervent non-yaoi friendshipper to a crippling extent, if that explains a lot of things. And hree's hoping this fic will be topped with sufficient friendship fluff for the regular friendshipper in you.

Thus said, this fandom needs more friendship and gen fics. There isn't enough to go around!

XD

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Ryoma tries hard not to scoff at the irony of his situation. The last thing the prince of tennis wants is to draw attention to his pathetic self – surely there is something to say when one sees an athlete, a healthy young boy at that, riding on an older boy's back with an obvious thick white bandage around his ankle. To think Ryoma wants to live an ordinary life outside the tennis courts, unnoticed. It's hard when passerbys are staring at him. He curses his unfortunate clumsiness two minutes ago, involving a staircase, a flying burger, Momoshiro, and Eiji – all of which left him a very, very twisted ankle.

Sempais are stupid. He now agrees with Horio (who has the tendency to gossip behind the Regulars' backs, not like he ever admits it to anyone anyway.) But it's too late anyway, and try as he had twisted himself exasperatedly out of their grasp, he was no match for two fifteen year old boys trained in physical exertion by a certain (mad) data freak, and so he now finds himself tossed upon Eiji's back, nursing an injury on the road home.

Ryoma wonders when it was that he started getting used to traditions like this. On Saturday mornings, post tennis practice, that Fuji will go off with his nee-san, that Tezuka with his stoic face will disappear somewhere else (he claims it's homework) and Oishi tagging along, Kawamaru tending to his father's shop, Kaidoh 'fshuing' and going off for his daily 30km run, leaving the three of them to their local burger shop downtown.

That it'll be so easy, so comfortable, so _at home - _to watch Momoshiro and Eiji argue about who's the most acrobatic and reflexive player on the team, to watch them talk excitedly about the latest tennis match on TV, to throttle each other over who's going to treat the next ice cream 'spree' they call it, to arm-wrestle sometimes just for the fun of it, to determine who's the taller person (Eiji always loses with Momoshiro pulling his sempai's ears), to see who can irritate Ochibi and make him snap at them first – Ryoma doesn't quite know how to explain the funny sensation in his heart when he's around them.

That now he should be on Eiji's back, with sleep catching up to him so that he's half-conscious of resting his head on the older boy's shoulder, that he should be hearing Momoshiro ranting on and on about the latest ice cream flavor that is something like peanut-butter-with-strawberry-jam at some place some where, that he sometimes wake up from his foggy dreams to see Momoshiro mussing his hair, to look down at Eiji to see his round brown eyes checking to make sure that "Ochibi's fine, nyaa, and not drooling on me, hoi hoi!" – it befuddles Ryoma so much, this strange, unfamiliar feeling, that he stops trying to understand anything anymore.

He rubs his eyes and closes them. His ankle still hurts. Stupid burger, stupid stairs, stupid sempais.

He'll think about this all later. Ryoma's sure he'll figure out why he feels so much like a little 'otouto' with two big brother figures when he's more awake anyway. About why he always gets the urge to call Eiji "nii-san", or why he sometimes doesn't mind so much anymore that Momoshiro always ends up neck-locking him so that he can't breathe.

Yeah, he'll think about all this later.

For now, as Ryoma breathes and feels the perspiration on the back of Eiji's shirt (it's a hot day, after all), he's sure he can get used to this alright.

**Owari**

and there you go, your eijimomoryo friendship fic. reviews are appreciated like chocolate drops from the sky.


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